Last leg first – Walking the South Downs Way

Whist this blog is about my photography, there has to be an inextricable link between taking pictures with the things I do, the places I go and the people I meet. I don’t ‘set up’ my photographs or continually ‘pixel peep’ by testing cameras, lenses or other equipment. I may from time to time comment on my gear, but for me this blog is more about my experiences and trying to capture those moments with a camera. Nor may I finish processing the images in the strict order they were taken. I will be drawn to a shot, work on it and then return to it later on, and in the interim start processing another image which could have be taken earlier or later.

So you might be asking yourself what is the meaning of the title to this particular entry? Well quite simply in September I walked 100 miles along the South Downs Way from Winchester to Eastbourne and as you might imagine I took many photographs. Although I have now finished processing quite a few of these, there are still others to do. Unfortunately there are only so many hours in the day. However I think I have completed work on the images I took on the last section of the trail as we walked from Cuckmere Haven, up and down the Seven Sisters, over Beachy Head, before the final descent into the East Sussex town of Eastbourne. So this entry covers the last leg of our walk and other posts in the future will I am sure cover other sections of the trail which took place in the preceding days.

Sunlight on Eastbourne as rain clouds circle all around.

Beachy Head lighthouse

Seven Sisters with Belle Tout lighthouse on the cliff in the far distance

Rain approaching the estuary at Cuckmere Haven

All the images in this post were processed in Lightroom 4, converted to black and white in Photoshop CS5 and the grain was added in Silver Efex Pro2 using the Kodak Tri X400 film preset.

Whilst writing this entry I remembered a great line in a Morecambe and Wise sketch from many years ago with the conductor Andre Previn, in which Eric Morecambe was trying to play a piece of Grieg’s Piano Concerto.

Andre Previn said to Eric –“You are playing all the wrong notes”to which Eric famously replied –“I’m playing all the right notes, not necessarily in the right order!”

So until the next leg of the walk, I hope you enjoyed the last one and if you have never seen this wonderfully funny sketch before, then here it is. The section of the sketch referred to above starts at around 10 minutes.